eval

Description

The eval() language construct is very dangerous
because it allows execution of arbitrary PHP code. Its use thus is
discouraged. If you have carefully verified that there is no other option
than to use this construct, pay special attention not to pass any user
provided data into it without properly validating it beforehand.

Parameters

code

Valid PHP code to be evaluated.

The code must not be wrapped in opening and closing
PHP tags, i.e.
'echo "Hi!";' must be passed instead of
'<?php echo "Hi!"; ?>'. It is still possible to leave and
re-enter PHP mode though using the appropriate PHP tags, e.g.
'echo "In PHP mode!"; ?>In HTML mode!<?php echo "Back in PHP mode!";'.

Apart from that the passed code must be valid PHP. This includes that all statements
must be properly terminated using a semicolon.
'echo "Hi!"' for example will cause a parse error, whereas
'echo "Hi!";' will work.

A return statement will immediately terminate the
evaluation of the code.

The code will be executed in the scope of the code calling eval(). Thus any
variables defined or changed in the eval() call will remain visible after
it terminates.

Return Values

eval() returns NULL unless
return is called in the evaluated code, in which case
the value passed to return is returned. As of PHP 7, if there is a
parse error in the evaluated code, eval() throws a ParseError exception.
Before PHP 7, in this case eval() returned
FALSE and execution of the following code continued normally. It is
not possible to catch a parse error in eval()
using set_error_handler().

- why? betterEval follows normal php opening and closing tag conventions, there's no need to strip `<?php?>` from the source. and it always throws a ParseError if there was a parse error, instead of returning false (note: this was fixed for normal eval() in php 7.0). - and there's also something about exception backtraces

I can't guarantee you absolutely that this will block every possible malicious code nor that it will block malformed code, but that's better than the matheval function below which will allow malformed code like '2+2+' which will throw an error.

Magic constants like __FILE__ may not return what you expect if used inside eval()'d code. Instead, it'll answer something like "c:\directory\filename.php(123) : eval()'d code" (under Windows, obviously, checked with PHP5.2.6) - which can still be processed with a function like preg_replace to receive the filename of the file containing the eval().